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Upper West Region (Ghana)

The Upper West Region of Ghana is located in the northwestern corner of Ghana, precisely located in the Kingdom of Dagbon, and is bordered by Upper East region to the east, Northern region to the south, and Burkina Faso to the west and north. The Upper West regional capital and largest settlement is Wa. Upper West is the youngest region to have been created in Ghana by the then former Head of State, Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings in 1983 under the Provisional National Defense Council. The area was carved out of the then Upper Region which is now the Upper East Region.

Geography and climate

Location and size

The Upper West Region is one of the ten regions of Ghana. It is located at the North Western corner of Ghana with latitude 9.8°- 11.O° North and longitude 1.6°- 3.0 West, bounded to Burkina Faso to the North.It covers a geographical area of 18,476 square kilometres which represents 12.7% of the total land area of Ghana. The northern Ghana-Burkina Faso border, on the east by the Upper East region and Northern region, on the south by the Northern region, and on the west by the western Ghana-Burkina Faso border borders the Upper West region on the north. It is the seventh largest region in Ghana in total area, and it is made up of eleven (11) districts.
By virtue of its location, it has the potential for international and inter-regional trade and other bi-lateral relations, but the overspill of criminal activities and disaster, such as bush fires, diseases and pestilence, armed robbery etc., from our neighbours also pose a threat to the region.

Little League Baseball expanded the LLWS to sixteen teams for the 2001 Little League World Series. The West Region was split into the West region – Arizona, Northern California, Southern California, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah – and the Northwest region – Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. Colorado and New Mexico moved to the Southwest Region for the 2002 tournament. Between 2002 and 2005, Hawaii competed in the Northwest region and Wyoming competed in the West region, before switching back to the original configuration in 2006.

As home to the enterprising Bamileke (Bamiléké) tribes, the West is an economic bright spot and one of Cameroon's more developed regions. This progressive development is tempered by the strong traditional culture that persists among the Bamileke and the province's other major ethnic group, the Bamum (sometimes Bamoum, Bamun, Bamoun).

Geography

Land

The West sits at the geological crossroads of Cameroon; the soil varies greatly within a relatively small land area. The land along the Noun River and at the Bamendjing Reservoir, for example, is a lightly evolved blend of various raw minerals. The province's western half, on the other hand, is a haphazard mixture of raw minerals, granite, ferrallitic patches of red dirt, and other types. Finally, the soil of the eastern portions away from the reservoir is ferrallitic. Rocks in the area range from the volcanic along the reservoir and Noun to Precambrian deposits of crystalline rocks such as granite and gneiss under a cover of basaltic rock in the northwest. Metamorphic rocks like gneiss and mica dominate the rest of the territory. The soil throughout is mostly red in color due to high iron content, though that of the northwest is black or brown basalt. The province's soils are the richest and most productive in Cameroon.

The territory of present-day Ghana has been inhabited for millennia, with the first permanent state dating back to the 11th century. Numerous kingdoms and empires emerged over the centuries, of which the most powerful was the Kingdom of Ashanti. Beginning in the 15th century, numerous European powers contested the area for trading rights, with the British ultimately establishing control of the coast by the late 19th century. Following over a century of native resistance, Ghana's current borders were established by the 1900s as the British Gold Coast. In 1957, it became the first sub-saharan African nation to declare independence from European colonisation.